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Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

I recently finished a fascinating and provocative book by Jonathan Taplin called Move Fast and Break Things. Taplin cast the storied tensions between creatives and technologists in a new light and changed my perspective on some contemporary issues such as safe harbor and the so-called YouTube value gap.

Although spiritually I might identify more with creatives, intellectually and professionally I am unquestionably a technologist. In truth, I fancy myself something of an intermediary, and in this blog, I have often tried to reconcile the disparate interests of the two group. So after reading Taplin’s book, it seemed only appropriate, once again, to update the views I have expressed here in light of some of the points that he made.

I have been learning a lot about digital advertising and mobile as my interest in music has expanded into video and media more generally. Along the way, I’ve been struck by the resemblance the evolving digital advertising space bears to the early days of electronic trading on Wall Street (naturally, I’m also not the first to make this connection).

I thought I would try unpacking the analogy a bit here to see how well it holds up and whether there are any lessons that could be learned from the equities markets. (This thought exercise takes up some space so for those so inclined, I’ve made it easy to skip to just the predictions and/or the lessons.) For an interesting read on the advent of electronic trading, I highly recommend Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys – very entertaining, even for someone like myself who lived it first hand.

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Things seem to be getting frothy in tech these days. Facebook paying nearly 1/10th it’s market cap for the WhatsApp user base sounds a lot like paying for “eyeballs” in the Dot-com era of the 1990’s. That acquisition was then quickly followed by the $2 billion Oculus announcement, which seems to be an even more awkward fit for the social network. Facebook is definitely playing the long game here.

The other news maker recently has been Disney’s acquisition of Maker Studios for nearly $1 billion. The fit between those two makes more obvious sense but the valuation still seems rich and has many around Silicon Beach scratching their heads. (UPDATE 4/14/2014: The plot only thickened when Relativity Media made a counter bid for Maker for an estimated $1.1 billion under a slightly different structure. This twist suggests a land grab for “new media” properties driven in part by fear of being shut out from all the good deals.)

The “follow the photos” theory for the WhatsApp purchase offered on PandoDaily (above link) sounds not only consistent with prior acquisitions (e.g. Instagram, a failed bid for Snapchat) but strategically sound as well. (UPDATE 4/28/14: Others have since echoed this theory as well.) An elegant explanation: co-opt the competition. Facebook can circumvent a disruptive threat by buying control now but letting the company continue to evolve separately. A simple solution to the classic innovator’s dilemma. A similarly consistent strategy and market view point probably lies behind Disney’s decision too.

Of course there are a great many other metrics to consider -measures of engagement like average view duration, likes, shares, and comments as well as demographics and devices, all of which can drive differences in the value derived from one subscriber or viewer to the next. One cannot simply impute a linear relationship between enterprise value and total subscribers. It would be analogous to looking at just the spot price today to estimate an options value, but there is no Black-Scholes model for new media start-ups.

Of course, some of the acquisition price still includes projected revenues. Trends such as market consolidation (a.k.a. all the recent acquisition activity), the growing popularity of brand integrations, a shift in ad dollars away from traditional television, and pressure building on YouTube to share more of ad revenues all add up to rosier financial projections, but for a start-up, those are just vanity metrics. (UPDATE 4/11/2014: As it turns out, Internet ad revenues have now overtaken broadcast.) They don’t account for the derivative value of what a company might learn from all the experimentation and audience engagement taking place on the YouTube platform.

Both Maker and AwesomenessTV have access to coveted customers segments – users that acquiring companies like Disney actually need to understand better to ensure their futures. They are paying for help figuring out where the market is going next so they can, “skate to the puck.” Next generation, digital-native media companies such as MCNs, unburdened by legacy operations, are uniquely positioned to provide that help.

Return on R&D is notoriously hard to estimate, and in an environment like this one, beware the winner’s curse. All that said, I get it. You can pay to play or risk being shut out – without the subscribers, the revenues or the future product/service pipeline.

After today’s Big Frame announcement, which seems like a sensible roll-up at just $15 million, I wonder who will be acquired next. (UPDATE 4/15/2014: Already DreamWorks Animation is rumored to be in talks with Vevo, in which YouTube also has a stake. Now that Relativity has lost out on Maker, surely that company will be looking for other deals. With Big Frame already out of play, one possibility would be going after a vertical like DanceOn or even looking outside of LA at something like Rooster Teeth in Austin or Diagonal View in the UK. I could see both of those latter two getting a reciprocal benefit from the connection back to the Media & Entertainment capital in California. The only thing that seems certain is Relativity will have to move fast because no one else seems to be slowing down.)

UPDATE 5/2/2014: Rumor has it that Relativity Media has decided to go after the most obvious next choice, one I considered but omitted above because I presumed to be too expensive. I ruled out Machinima almost immediately because Warner put money in that company just the prior month, but I should have at least mentioned Fullscreen. No deal has been reach, and if there’s truth in all the dramatic speculation in reports of a Relativity bid for Fullscreen, a deal may still be very unlikely. Nonetheless I wanted to update this post yet again because this latest development clearly demonstrates something at play in addition to financial considerations and even open innovation. My take is that Relativity sees the cost of acquiring Fullscreen for a loss (e.g. for an anticipated negative ROI) is less than the expected cost to its business of being shut out of any good MCN deals and slowly watching new media erode its business. The situation seems analogous to an airline that continues to operate unprofitably because of its fixed costs; old media companies like Relativity are better off staying in the game and making a bid than forfeiting altogether.

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Someone asked me earlier this year to finish the sentence, “2013: The Year of _____.” My response, “2013: The Year of Video.” Of course, with most of the year behind us now, some may disagree with my a priori assessment, but I had three trends in mind that still seem to be signaling something:

Facebook is no longer cool. It suffers from the same problem as your mother’s jeans. Instagram has become the new platform for youth culture. A whole generation is learning to communicate as much in images as words. Proof point #2: Snapchat.

The launch of Instagram Video sent a shockwave through social networks. Poor Vine. Now that some of the initial buzz has worn off, Instagram Video seems more incremental than revolutionary, but regardless, the short-form video continues to hold allure and encourage experimentation among both consumers and businesses.

Product placements aren’t just for Hollywood anymore. Talenthouse has built a platform for promotional campaigns that can tap the long tail of digital media creatives. Multi-channel YouTube networks have launched services like Fullscreen’s Gorilla and Maker Studios’ MakerMADE, and new tools, such as Fuisz, are emerging to enable more monetization options from video interactivity.

At a time when marketers are throwing around buzzwords like “authenticity” and “engagement,” online video has become one of the most attractive channels for reaching consumers (and I don’t mean YouTube channels). Could video also hold the promise of a fair shake in the Internet age for artists?

The music video for Hood Party by Fat Tony provides an excellent illustration for what I have in mind. What if Fat Tony had been able to connect with Google before making that video? This is a company already paying to promote products like Google+, Google Hangout, and Google Music at music festivals and other events. It’s a safe bet the company would also have been willing to pay something see their product appear in that video (along with H-town’s Bun B) instead the fictitious “Froogal.”

Fat Tony may not be the biggest name in hip hop, but he has a unique voice and a persona to which his fans can relate to better than some mega-Hova-superstar. That’s authentic, and for the audience he reaches, it drives more substantive engagement than anything Kanye West can offer.

Nonetheless, Tony’s audience remains relatively small. It’s too costly for Google to seek out, identify and negotiate deals with enough artists like Tony to reach a compellingly large audience. What if someone else could aggregate those audiences instead and facilitate the transaction like a clearing house at a stock exchange?

As the means of production have become more accessible, creative stars have proliferated. Even though their individual luminosity may be modest at best, as constellations they could be brighter than any other one star alone. Surely there is a viable business for anyone who can broker the relationships and lower the transaction costs from connecting brands and all those creatives. Corporate sponsorship, however unappealing that may sound, could be the new patronage for the digital era.